June 18th, 2010
When a feature is adopted by everyone it’s no longer a feature. This is how it will be for social, location and rewards. Technological innovation is not taking a trending topic and applying it to your project. Innovation is when you see the trend before it even exists and create that trend.
Making anything social at this point isn’t innovative; it’s a part of the product. Pretty soon the same will go for location and rewards. Let’s go one step further – if you make your product based solely on the above features then you’re shooting for the middle.
If you’re not adding social features to your new app then you’re behind the times. People expect your new thing to include social features. If you’re creating a location based service (LBS) application then rewards of some sort are a given. In fact, if you can’t greatly improve on the current market leaders then you shouldn’t be making a LBS app.
Innovation doesn’t come from reiteration. It comes from iteration. Case in point: Friendster. Friendster got to the social network game early but didn’t iterate often enough. When they were having bandwidth troubles & couldn’t scale fast enough people jumped ship for Myspace, who took advantage of Friendster’s woes.
Now Friendster’s co-founder has a new project called Place Pop. It’s an LBS with a rewards structure – that’s it. The badge system isn’t even compelling enough to compete with the top contenders. You can earn bronze, silver, gold and platinum badges based on your checkins.
In order to beat the market leader your product needs to be more compelling. You need to have a better product with more features put together in a new and innovative way. If you’re not doing that then you’re creating an ‘also ran as’.
The lesson we can learn here is this:
timing + planning + improvement = success
Pretty soon everything will be social, include location and give you rewards. As more and more companies include these features the public expects every product to have them. It’s up to you as an innovative entrepreneur to look beyond the horizon to what is next.
What do people need? What will they need? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself when creating. If you’re just going to a competitor then you’re only going to rise to the middle. If you don’t care about making people’s lives better then how are they supposed to care about your product?
Tags: entrepreneur, Friendster, LBS, Place Pop, rewards, social media
Posted in analysis, business, featured, technology | No Comments »
April 4th, 2010
Science fiction helps us to dream beyond today. This can be both good and bad. Good in that it gets ideas flowing that may have some practical applications towards today. Bad in that it allows many to stay in a far off place with too many high minded ideas that can’t be created for a while if not ever.
Science fiction is dangerous, for everyone. It’s dangerous for do nothing laggards and those who would get rich off of monotony. It’s dangerous for society, for the thoughts it brings can be life changing and earth shattering. It’s dangerous for everyone because eventually it will coopt your job your paycheck your life and force you to adapt to new circumstances.
At one point space rockets and underwater submarine ships were a thing of a wild man’s imagination yet Jules Verne had the foresight to envision one of them. While far fetched science fiction plays a huge role in revolutionizing our lives I’m more interested in the science fiction that blends reality with possible actionable results in the near future. I like to call this science faction.
This area can easily be related to, envisioned as a possible future and people can actually put steps in place to create said creations. The more something is closer to reality the more tangible it is for someone to bring it in to reality. Movies like Minority Report and books that Cory Doctorow write all have futuristic machine elements woven into everyday life in a palatable manner. It’s not too hard for a layman to envision a not too distant future with them and the devices in it. When average everyday people can see themselves in the plot of a science faction story then it’s that much easier for your inventors to create and market similar items onto the same public.
So how does this affect us? Dreamers need to keep on dreaming and creators creating. In fact the artists – your writers, directors etc – need to team up with inventors and entrepreneurs to amplify each others messages into an augmented reality. No I’m not talking about AR. That’s unactionable playtime that the average lazy man won’t use until they fully understand it, it’s easy to use and it passes the tipping point in society.
That’s the crux of all of this. Apple works so brilliantly because they release futuristic looking devices that slightly improve on your everyday life. Apple isn’t looking to give you a hoverboard or teleportation device, although someday they may. People buy the familiar improvement. They consume the 1.1.2. They think the 3.0 is cool but push it too early and it flips big time. As much as people want to innovate their lives they still need to make your crazy contraption fit seamlessly into the rest of their boring mundane existence. If your device can’t integrate with their reality you’ve just moved yourself from science faction to science fiction to oblivion.
Tags: actionable results, machine elements, point space, science faction, space rockets
Posted in analysis, business, featured, technology | 1 Comment »
February 16th, 2010
Free is fiscal anarchy. Free in it’s purest form is just bad for business. Free is a poor man’s game and ultimately unsustainable.
You will rarely see free without strings attached, and that’s a good thing. You as the consumer may not directly feel the tradeoff for free but be sure that someone else will. Free for you means someone else has to pay. Free in it’s purest form means the giver has to pay.
Free is a myth. Nothing is truly free. Someone always has to pay. This is a universal law, the law of reciprocation. When you take something from one place to give it to another something must replace where the item originally was. In the physical world when an object is moved air rushes in to fill the void. The same goes for the economic world. Something must eventually fill that void.
Free* is your best friend as a businessman. See the asterisk? That denotes that something must be paid by someone somewhere in order for it to exist. Even when you give your time and energy away to a project most are looking to benefit from their increase in reputation, experience and perceived value.
As a creator of wealth it’s your duty to figure out how free* can best benefit you:
- Start writing a blog and give your knowledge away.
- Create a targeted curated online resource package for your customers that will show them your personal value to them.
- Give personalized customer service and feedback that speaks to each individual on a hypertargeted micro level.
- Give suggestions of other products, services and businesses that may be of relevance. This will also go far if you recommend local businesses or other affiliates in your network.
The free* that you can give that will ingratiate people with you isn’t stuff, it’s you. Giving things only satisfies the right now. When you give of yourself, your knowledge, you end up sharing a piece of yourself that stays with someone much much longer than the one time encounter. People want a story and they want a journey. Give that to them.
Tags: economic world, personal value, purest form, reciprocation, resource package
Posted in business, featured | 5 Comments »
February 13th, 2010
Social media is an amazing medium that has allowed businesses of all kinds to connect with customers in a direct targeted real way. While it’s great it’s not a panacea. Social media isn’t a band-aid.
Social media is only as helpful as you are. What do I mean by this? As an addition that amplifies your original business efforts and customer service it is amazing. Once it starts taking center stage over your original efforts that’s when you run into problems. That’s socialwashing.
The icing on a cake may taste amazing but if the actual cake part is horrendous no one is going to eat it regardless of how tasty the icing is. If your business operations are shoddy and your customer service is flagging there’s only so much social media can do. There’s also only a certain amount of time you have to fool people that everything is alright with your sleight of hand magic tricks.
The danger comes into play when your original supporters – your evangelists – abandon you because you become too obssessed with social media and lose sight of your most important customers needs. It’s a sad day when you as the customer realizes that you must part ways with what has come to be a good friend.
A good friend isn’t someone who ignores their friend’s basic needs and is only cares about fun. That’s a fairweather friend. That’s exactly what socialwashing is.
Tags: business efforts, business is business, fairweather friend, sleight of hand magic tricks, taking center stage
Posted in business, featured, social media | No Comments »
February 10th, 2010
A node is a point where many points meet. While this may seem like a linchpin, a supernode connects seemingly disparate topics and brings those groups together in a new group.
Supernodes can be found in many different areas – people, places and things. One place that’s a supernode is Rice.
Rice is a small chain restaurant in NYC known for their varied dishes. All of the dishes center on – you guessed it – rice. What makes this important is that instead of focusing on the traditional way of dining based on a culture (Italian) or a food (cupcakes) they unify multiple cultures around a single ingredient.
What comes from this is a new and unique experience. Your taste buds are allowed to intermingle many different flavors at once that they may have not been privvy to before. The conversation that’s created around the supernode is priceless. That’s what a supernode does.
A supernode is a trailblazer more often than not. A supernode also may take center stage because of the sheer fact that it is center and a point of congregation. What the supernode does best naturally is act as a conduit for many different streams to converge. It allows the different nodes to be on center stage and come together because it is by nature the center.
So what does all this mean to you? These supernodes are changing reality. We’re all more enriched and emboldened because of them. They turn the impossible into I’m possible.
Tags: flavors, linchpin, sheer fact, supernode, taste buds
Posted in analysis, business, featured, life | No Comments »
February 8th, 2010
We only think of failure as a bad thing when in actuality it couldn’t be better. Failure is what drives us to reinvigorate, reinvent, renew, refresh, restart. The only true failure is if you choose not to try again. Failure is what allows us to take our game to the next level. The only way you can turn failure into a positive experience is if you have a winner’s mindset.
Winning isn’t everything. In fact, it’s only a very small percentage of everything. Winners have to go through a lot of failure before “it” happens. Winners are not made over night; they’re made over many nights.
What do I want to do? Fail hard and fail spectacularly. I’d rather not have my wins come easy to me one after another. Savoring the glorious victory isnt as sweet without the experiencing agony of defeat.
Tags: actuality, agony of defeat, glorious victory, mindset, next level
Posted in business, featured, life | 1 Comment »
January 31st, 2010
Why do people gather? For that matter why does anything gather? To be around like minds?
To not be alone. As much as someone says they want to be alone they don’t. We all need others to define ourselves.
Online and offline you’ll see people gathering naturally:
Chat rooms
Discussion boards
Social networks
Microblogging platforms
Special events
Clubs
Concerts
Museums
These are places where people naturally come together around one centralized topic. If you look closer there are overlapping subtopics that look like many Venn Diagrams overlaid at once. They may have differing opinions and views on what they’re consuming but the one thing that remains constant is what they are there for.
Some ways people gather are apparent while others are more subtle. One thing is for sure – we gather and we gather often.
Tags: clubs concerts, social networks, subtle one, subtopics, venn diagrams
Posted in analysis, business, featured, life | 2 Comments »
January 31st, 2010
If you thought people would laugh at you before you did something would you do it? Do you think that if you did that’s brave? I do.
There’s a certain amount of chutzpah that a trailblazer needs. Innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, creators – they all regularly put themselves on the line to be critiqued. Why do they allow themselves to be emotionally ripped apart day in an day out? The benefits outweigh the bruises.
If you’re willing to risk humiliation for a huge reward you may just be one of them. Know this: it probably won’t come easy, there will be a lot of heartache but you will gain invaluable experience along the way.
What if Apple gave up at revolutionizing design in computing? Well we’d all have beige boxes and generally uninspiring hardware. Most people wrote Apple off as an “also-ran-as” but they kept forging on. Each one of us has what it takes to be a trailblazer. You just have to be willing to be laughed at.
Tags: beige boxes, chutzpah, heartache, innovators, invaluable experience
Posted in business, featured, life | 2 Comments »
January 31st, 2010
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” -Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein started out working in a patent office [1] but clearly didn’t end up known as the best patent clerk in the world (although I can argue he was the most notorious). He changed his routine. He changed his world.
Which brings me to a larger point – everything doesn’t last forever and will ultimately change.
If you’re working at your job and have been for years in the same 9-5 Monday to Friday path look at it on two levels: macro and micro. On the macro level – you haven’t always worked at your job. You were in school. You had hopes and dreams beyond working in an office for a large company. On the micro level – you have new interactions everyday, with a coworker, a business associate, the coffee shop guy, the internet. Nothing you do will EVER give you the same results.
Why did something happen? How did you get to where you are? You ultimately decided to allow it to happen. You may have not forced the circumstances that led up to the decisive moment but you did let it into your life.
On the micro level Albert Einstein is wrong. You can never have the same results. There are too many factors in that moment to make it exactly the same. On the macro level he’s right. If you keep on doing what you’ve been doing the way you’ve always been doing it don’t expect a different outcome.
Change your view. Change the way you approach things. Do you walk the same way every day? Change your routine. Find a new way to get to done. In the very least it’ll make life more interesting. At most it could change your whole life.
*Side note – I’m changing my own routine. All branding and social media articles will be over at http://damienbasile.posterous.com. More general posts about how to ‘get to done’ will be over here from now on. I’ve done this to create clarity and save me time writing so I can use my time more efficiently elsewhere.
Tags: albert einstein, einstein albert, hopes and dreams, patent clerk, patent office
Posted in business, featured, life | 1 Comment »
